Yessir! That's some goooooood listenin'!
March 23, 2010
Bargain Bin
Hey Kids! Do you remember record albums? Do you still call CD's albums? Then you're probably old enough to remember these from your local wax merchant. If the covers are this awesome, just imagine what the music sounds like ...
March 22, 2010
Exile
The week I have dreaded is now upon me. For the foreseeable future, I will not be able to cruise through my evenings sitting in my comfy chair and watching cable on my beloved teevee.
My lovely wife, who normally doesn't care what I watch in the evening as long as it isn't South Park or Family Guy will be parked in front of the television, her school papers and Tetrus game be damned, watching her favorite show of all time.
Fucking Dancing With The Fucking Stars.
I'll be forced to sit upstairs in the "extra" room, watching network crap on the teeny television with rabbit ear reception. How did I come to deserve this ignoble fate?
However, Jan doesn't ask much of me, and I love her. So, I will not say a word and will let her enjoy "her show" in peace. That's what kind of guy I am. Plus, she would de-ball me with a boning knife in about two seconds flat if I touched the remote.
If you're wondering about the competitors, Olympic Skating Guy and Chad Ochocinco have been picked by the Vegas oddsmakers as the picks to win, at 5 to 1 and 4 to 1 respectively. Super skank Kate Gosselin is pegged to go out on the first round.
And my boyhood hero, Buzz Aldrin is slated to go down by the third round. Imagine. Buzz Aldrin, X-15 pilot and the second man on the moon, on some slimy televised dance contest. I hope he gets the hook during the first dance.
Have some dignity Buzzy. And the rest of you losers ... break a leg. Both of them if possible.
My lovely wife, who normally doesn't care what I watch in the evening as long as it isn't South Park or Family Guy will be parked in front of the television, her school papers and Tetrus game be damned, watching her favorite show of all time.
Fucking Dancing With The Fucking Stars.
I'll be forced to sit upstairs in the "extra" room, watching network crap on the teeny television with rabbit ear reception. How did I come to deserve this ignoble fate?
However, Jan doesn't ask much of me, and I love her. So, I will not say a word and will let her enjoy "her show" in peace. That's what kind of guy I am. Plus, she would de-ball me with a boning knife in about two seconds flat if I touched the remote.
If you're wondering about the competitors, Olympic Skating Guy and Chad Ochocinco have been picked by the Vegas oddsmakers as the picks to win, at 5 to 1 and 4 to 1 respectively. Super skank Kate Gosselin is pegged to go out on the first round.
And my boyhood hero, Buzz Aldrin is slated to go down by the third round. Imagine. Buzz Aldrin, X-15 pilot and the second man on the moon, on some slimy televised dance contest. I hope he gets the hook during the first dance.
Have some dignity Buzzy. And the rest of you losers ... break a leg. Both of them if possible.
March 21, 2010
Medical Waste & The End Of Baseball
It's probably true that most memories of your youth are imbedded between the ages of 4 and 11. At the very least, they are the most pleasant, because the next ten years tend to be a jumble of hormones, embarrassment and outbreaks of acne that you'd just as soon forget. For me, those early years were spent at 1945 Cherry Street Court. I don't exactly know what a "court" is supposed to be, but ours was a horseshoe type with about 20 houses, most of them 2 bed, 1 bath bungalows.
As in most houses that size with mom, dad and two or three kids, we continually tripped over each other and fought for the one bathroom. So, when summer rolled around, the kids spent as little time indoors as possible.
The Spences' home was in the southwest corner of the court. They were the landed gentry of the neighborhood, with a large house, a large lot, and an attached empty lot about three-quarters the size of a football field. They were reclusive people who we thought kept a couple of horses in a small barn at the back of their house. We didn't know much about them and kept our distance out of respect for the upper class. But they were not unkind, because they let the neighborhood children play in their extra lot, which was known as "Spences' Field" They had erected a small shack that resembled a concession stand in the northwest corner, and inside they kept canvas bases, a few baseball bats and a croquet set. On one wall they had tacked up a list of "rules"which basically said to behave and don't tear up shit. If they didn't like something that had happened, they would tack up another note admonishing us. We always took these special notes very seriously, because nobody wanted to be banished from Spences' Field.
During the summer, there was a pick-up baseball game during the afternoon almost every weekday. The Bench boys and the McNair boys would always play. They were the jocks. My buddy Mike and I would usually join in, and sometimes our sort-of friend, Mark, would play too. But Mark was kind of effeminate and tended to squeal when excited, so we liked it better when he stayed home. And there were others that I don't really remember. Most of the time, the games were small, but four or five times a summer, there were a full 9 kids on each team.
The baseball games went on year after year, with all of the fun and bickering that went with them. But in the Spring of 1962, something changed ... big time. One day, the equipment shack disappeared, and then the bull dozers came. Over the summer Spences' Field (including the Bench home) and the pasture to the north along Glenstone Avenue was transformed into a new "Medical Village" with a huge adjacent parking lot. The new facility was architecturally all early 60's chic, laid out like an outdoor strip mall with inverted canopies and hammered metal fountains. But instead of shops, there were doctors offices and a pharmacy. Actually, this was quite ahead of its time for a rube town such as ours.
Naturally, we were incensed at the change. But what could we do? Well, we could go play in the new "Medical Village". This didn't last too long, thanks to the no-horseshit security guards.
But the security guards weren't around in the evenings, or the weekends. In fact, nobody was there, so when Mike came over to visit, we usually ended up over at the MV, as we called it. And it wasn't too long before we found the mother lode ... the dumpsters.
It's hard to fathom now, but back in the early 60's, the concept of "bio-waste" hadn't really been addressed, so the dumpsters were a cauldron for everything coming out of the doctors offices.
Including syringes. Syringes with the needles still attached. And one Saturday, we found the mother lode. Of course we knew what they were for, and we cringed when a doctor approached us with one. But here in the dumpster, they didn't look so menacing. In fact, they looked like the perfect mini-squirt guns. So we each grabbed a couple of the larger ones, found a mud puddle and proceeded to spray each other with muddy water combined with Jesus knows whatever had been in those syringes. This went on for a while until Mike decided that they made great darts too, and started throwing them at me until I threatened to kick his ass.
Our dumpster diving went on for a couple of weeks, until one day we discovered something repulsive laying beside a bin. A small, reddish gelatinous mass surrounded by bloody gauze. Quicker than we could react, Mike's dog chomped down on the goo and swallowed it. We stood, stunned, for just a moment, and then Mike went berserk, screaming an crying that his dog was going to die. He dragged the mutt home and we waited several anxious days, but the dog was fine.
After the incident, it slowly dawned on us that we really shouldn't be messing around the dumpsters, and we stopped. Which was just as well, because it wasn't long afterwards that the powers that be secured them behind a locked fence.
When I sit back and think about all of the things I did when I was a kid, I'm truly amazed that I lived into adulthood. I guess there was some luck there, mixed in with just a wisp of common sense. My best friend Mike wasn't so lucky.
But that's a story for another time.
As in most houses that size with mom, dad and two or three kids, we continually tripped over each other and fought for the one bathroom. So, when summer rolled around, the kids spent as little time indoors as possible.
The Spences' home was in the southwest corner of the court. They were the landed gentry of the neighborhood, with a large house, a large lot, and an attached empty lot about three-quarters the size of a football field. They were reclusive people who we thought kept a couple of horses in a small barn at the back of their house. We didn't know much about them and kept our distance out of respect for the upper class. But they were not unkind, because they let the neighborhood children play in their extra lot, which was known as "Spences' Field" They had erected a small shack that resembled a concession stand in the northwest corner, and inside they kept canvas bases, a few baseball bats and a croquet set. On one wall they had tacked up a list of "rules"which basically said to behave and don't tear up shit. If they didn't like something that had happened, they would tack up another note admonishing us. We always took these special notes very seriously, because nobody wanted to be banished from Spences' Field.
During the summer, there was a pick-up baseball game during the afternoon almost every weekday. The Bench boys and the McNair boys would always play. They were the jocks. My buddy Mike and I would usually join in, and sometimes our sort-of friend, Mark, would play too. But Mark was kind of effeminate and tended to squeal when excited, so we liked it better when he stayed home. And there were others that I don't really remember. Most of the time, the games were small, but four or five times a summer, there were a full 9 kids on each team.
The baseball games went on year after year, with all of the fun and bickering that went with them. But in the Spring of 1962, something changed ... big time. One day, the equipment shack disappeared, and then the bull dozers came. Over the summer Spences' Field (including the Bench home) and the pasture to the north along Glenstone Avenue was transformed into a new "Medical Village" with a huge adjacent parking lot. The new facility was architecturally all early 60's chic, laid out like an outdoor strip mall with inverted canopies and hammered metal fountains. But instead of shops, there were doctors offices and a pharmacy. Actually, this was quite ahead of its time for a rube town such as ours.
Naturally, we were incensed at the change. But what could we do? Well, we could go play in the new "Medical Village". This didn't last too long, thanks to the no-horseshit security guards.
But the security guards weren't around in the evenings, or the weekends. In fact, nobody was there, so when Mike came over to visit, we usually ended up over at the MV, as we called it. And it wasn't too long before we found the mother lode ... the dumpsters.
It's hard to fathom now, but back in the early 60's, the concept of "bio-waste" hadn't really been addressed, so the dumpsters were a cauldron for everything coming out of the doctors offices.
Including syringes. Syringes with the needles still attached. And one Saturday, we found the mother lode. Of course we knew what they were for, and we cringed when a doctor approached us with one. But here in the dumpster, they didn't look so menacing. In fact, they looked like the perfect mini-squirt guns. So we each grabbed a couple of the larger ones, found a mud puddle and proceeded to spray each other with muddy water combined with Jesus knows whatever had been in those syringes. This went on for a while until Mike decided that they made great darts too, and started throwing them at me until I threatened to kick his ass.
Our dumpster diving went on for a couple of weeks, until one day we discovered something repulsive laying beside a bin. A small, reddish gelatinous mass surrounded by bloody gauze. Quicker than we could react, Mike's dog chomped down on the goo and swallowed it. We stood, stunned, for just a moment, and then Mike went berserk, screaming an crying that his dog was going to die. He dragged the mutt home and we waited several anxious days, but the dog was fine.
After the incident, it slowly dawned on us that we really shouldn't be messing around the dumpsters, and we stopped. Which was just as well, because it wasn't long afterwards that the powers that be secured them behind a locked fence.
When I sit back and think about all of the things I did when I was a kid, I'm truly amazed that I lived into adulthood. I guess there was some luck there, mixed in with just a wisp of common sense. My best friend Mike wasn't so lucky.
But that's a story for another time.
March 16, 2010
Binge/Purge
Every once in a while, my photo album becomes a little too much to manage, and I start looking for the runts of the litter to throw into the virtual trash can. Some of them have been there for a long while, and others just a short time. But they all need to go. However, I am not by nature a cruel person, and like the jailer who gives the condemned man his last meal, I'm giving these images a last public airing before their hasty demise. Please give them the respect they are due ...
But It Must Not Have Went By This Sign
This was supposed to be in Amarillo, Texas, but I'll be damned if I could find it.
Our Car In Salinas, California
And we were in Gallup, New Mexico. A long story with a tragic, yet uplifting ending that I won't go into now.
Giant Phallic Rock Formation
It really didn't look like that in person. It's in a national park, but there's probably a reason you never see it in a travel brochure.
The Last Vacation Photo
An abandoned gas station in Denver taken in a traffic jam. We went 800 more miles and I can't believe we didn't take even one more picture.
My Son, The Artist
One of his projects from college. It always made me want to watch Total Recall.
Portrait Of Stalin In Weird Hat
This fascinated me. The only thing I could figure out was that it was a covering for those crazy WWI helmets with the spikes on top.
The Day Came And Went ... I Got Neither
Cool!
I was going to build a post around this, but realized that I had nothing to write about. Such a shame.
Same Thing (click to enlarge)
It was fun guys. Now head for the trash can where you belong ... "CRRRUUUNNNCCCHHH"!
March 14, 2010
Never A Dull Moment
About a week back, I passed the 200 post milestone for this blog. Frankly, I never knew I had that much material pent up inside myself and I'm just a little more than amazed when I look at that number. Of course, there are days where I'd like to write something, but inspiration is lacking. I know of other bloggers who hit that wall too, but they seem to have a well of material that they can always draw from. Whether it's their children, their perceived poverty, or their psychcoses, they usually have some source from which to cobble together a post.
I guess I've got that source also. He's not as reliable as kids, poverty, etc., but he comes across on occasion. And he is my next door neighbor, Ron. Ron is in his late 30's. He's a big guy with a beer belly who likes to wear doo rags, cut-off Walmart jeans and day-glo t-shirts with "Security" printed on the back. When he's not littering his front lawn with a hundred bicycles he bought at an auction, practicing small engine repair on 10 or 20 broken down lawn mowers and snow throwers in his driveway or driving his go-cart around our court, he likes to try to kill me, cut the heads off of deer and ... trap cats.
On a given weekend morning, it's not unusual for me to step out the side door of my garage for a breath of fresh air and see something totally off the wall next door. This morning, groggy from losing an hour's sleep because of the stupid time change, I carried my cup of coffee out the side door and saw this:
I guess I've got that source also. He's not as reliable as kids, poverty, etc., but he comes across on occasion. And he is my next door neighbor, Ron. Ron is in his late 30's. He's a big guy with a beer belly who likes to wear doo rags, cut-off Walmart jeans and day-glo t-shirts with "Security" printed on the back. When he's not littering his front lawn with a hundred bicycles he bought at an auction, practicing small engine repair on 10 or 20 broken down lawn mowers and snow throwers in his driveway or driving his go-cart around our court, he likes to try to kill me, cut the heads off of deer and ... trap cats.
On a given weekend morning, it's not unusual for me to step out the side door of my garage for a breath of fresh air and see something totally off the wall next door. This morning, groggy from losing an hour's sleep because of the stupid time change, I carried my cup of coffee out the side door and saw this:
Meow?!?
I shook my head a couple of times to clear the cobwebs and looked again. Yeah, that's a cat all right. He's had that small animal trap sitting there all winter, but I thought it was just another piece in the menagerie of junky shit he keeps all around his house. Apparently, he armed and baited it last night. I don't know if he was really gunning for the raccoons that roam around here, or if he had specifically targeted cats.
This cat looked vaguely familiar, so I walked over to take a closer look at it to see if it was the same one that had taken a nose dive into my window well about a month ago.
HISSSSS!
Yup, same one. Geez Blackie, you're sure using up those nine lives at a good clip! While I was standing there, trying to figure out how to open the trap, the garage door started going up. So, rather than being caught trying to free the cat from it's holding cell, I skittered back over to my place. I don't know what would have been more weird ... me trying to explain why I was trying to let the cat out of the trap, or him trying to explain why he was trapping cats. But at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I didn't feel like having one of those "life's awkward moments" experiences.
Anyway, I looked out the side door a couple of hours later, and the cat was gone. I figured that either a) He had freed the cat or b) Was preparing same cat for this evenings dinner. Knowing this guy, I wouldn't put "b" in the realm of the unlikely.
Being the curious sort, I looked up this site and learned that, indeed, there is more than one way to skin a cat and prepare a delicious feline main course. And, if I were you, I really wouldn't click on that link unless you want to ruin your appetite ... unless you already did, in which case it's too late and I really should have thought it through about placing this caution before the link.
Sorry ...
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